Tag Archives: giveaway

Two years ago, we had an amazing, fun day at Lego KidsFest. Sweet Hippie Daughter spent the day in a fit of creative fever. Handsome Hippie Hubby and I may have built a new creation (or twelve) as well. That’s why I am thrilled to share that…

Award-winning LEGO KidsFest is coming back to Cleveland!

November 4-6 we will be heading back to the land of imagination, and I can’t even wait until J-Rex sees the giant LEGO brick pile. He’s going to lose his mind. It’s going to be awesome.

The very best part?

YOU GET TO GO, TOO!

Check out all the details below, including a chance to win FREE tickets! You’re going to want to get your tickets ASAP. Previous events have been known to sell out.

What can you expect at the event?

The award-winning LEGO KidsFest Ohio returns to Cleveland’s I-X Center from Nov. 4 – 6, 2016.
Those who attended the previous show can once again expect hands-on building, creative experiences and one-of-a-kind activities. Children of all ages and builders of all skills and levels are welcome.

LEGO KidsFest features dozens of new activities and popular favorites on the three-acre show floor.

New activities for this year’s visit include LEGO Mindstorms, LEGO Movie, LEGO Disney Princess, the Mixels, a LEGO Superheroes area and more.

Other events include:

* LEGO Model Museum: dozens of life-sized models made entirely from LEGO bricks
* Race Ramps: build a custom car, then race it down the ramp against friends and family
* LEGO Star Wars: build and display a Star Wars model
* Creation Nation: build your own creation to add to a custom map of the U.S.
* LEGO DUPLO: younger visitors can explore imagination through building
* LEGO Retail: purchase LEGO merchandise and official KidsFest tour goods
* Brick Pile: a gigantic pile full of LEGO bricks for creative play and enjoyment
* Monochromatic Builds: bricks of a single color to foster group creativity
* LEGO Friends: build for the five empowered friends from Heartlake City
* LEGO Ninjago: spin the way to being a Spinjitzu member
* LEGO Mindstorms: build and program robots and snakes
* LEGO Technic: get hands-on with the cool, realistic vehicles at the booth
* LEGO Disney Princess: create a princess scene to add to a LEGO story book

“We’re thrilled to be returning to the Cleveland area,” said Vince Rubino, Events Manager for LEGO Systems, Inc. “We’ve got a host of new activities as well as some areas we know are very popular with our fans. Not only will families create some new memories at the show, they’ll get another chance to flex and showcase their building skills. This event is a must for the true LEGO fan.”

Five sessions – all identical and 4 1/2 half hours in length – are held at each tour stop. LEGO KidsFest tickets can be purchased by clicking here.

Tickets are $19 for the Friday and Sunday afternoon sessions, and $22 for both sessions on Saturday and the Sunday morning session.

On tour since 2009, previous LEGO KidsFest tour stops have included major cities such as Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Atlanta, San Jose, Cleveland, Richmond, Phoenix, Portland and more.

FUN FACTS

More than 400 billion LEGO bricks have been produced since 1949.
The LEGO minifigure represents the world’s largest population of people! More than four billion minifigures have been produced in the last 30 years. This is almost 12 times the population of the United States!
LEGO minifigures are out of this world, literally. The two Mars Rovers have an image of the LEGO minifigure etched into their front grill.
Approximately seven LEGO sets are sold each second.
There are about 62 LEGO bricks for every one of the world’s six billion inhabitants.
Laid end to end, the number of LEGO bricks sold in a year would reach more than five times around the world.
There are 915 million ways to combine six eight-stud LEGO bricks.
Children around the world spend five billion hours a year playing with LEGO bricks.
With a production of about 306 million tires produced a year, the LEGO group is the largest producer of tires in the world.
LEGO is the contraction of two Danish words, “leg godt” which means “play well”.
More than 19 billion LEGO elements are produced every year. More than 2.16 million LEGO elements are molded every hour, or 36,000 per minute.
It took 50 hours and 68,000 LEGO bricks to make the storybook in the LEGO Disney Princess at the shows.
The largest LEGO Model ever built is the life sized X-Wing fighter. It took more than 17000 hours to build over 5m bricks and 46000 pounds.
By 2020, LEGO’s aim is to make sure that 100% of its energy will be balanced by renewable energy sources.

WIN TICKETS

Giveaway Details:

One of MY followers will win two tickets to the opening night session on Friday, Nov 4 2016 (4-8:30pm). I encourage you to LIKE and Follow LEGOKidsFest on Facebook, Twitter and/or Instagram for all the latest ticketing updates as this event has been selling out in prior cities. Must be 18 to enter, 1 entry per day allowed, random drawing by USFG!

Winner will be randomly chosen by USFG on and announced on my Blog and notified via email,

*I received a free sample to facilitate this review. All opinions are honest and my own.

Is there a certain room where you feel happy, relaxed, stressed, productive or sleepy? Perhaps it is the color of the space that’s affecting you.

Studies have shown that people react in certain ways to differently colored spaces. Being in a very yellow room can speed metabolism and increase concentration, but it is also linked with losing one’s temper while pink is so calming that some professional sports teams paint the visiting locker rooms pink to keep them mellow before a game. In spaces that are blue people are more productive – so much so that weightlifters have actually been shown to be capable of lifting heavier weights in gyms that are blue!

It’s not just the paint colors that get to us. The very light in a room can change our brain chemistry. A large study showed that people who slept in a room where they were exposed to blue or white light struggled more with depression, even though their actual sleep habits were not disturbed at all. On the other hand, red-tinted light didn’t bother them.

Have you ever wished that you could change or soften the light in a room for a romantic dinner or party?

If you don’t have the time, money or energy to remodel your room or buy expensive, colored lights Moodies may be just the ticket.

Moodies are silicone covers for light bulbs. They are made from the same heat-resistant silicone that bakeware is crafted from, so they are safe against the new “pigtail” lightbulbs* and they are super easy to use. You just slip them on over the bulb and tug them off again when you are done. When they originally reached out to me to see if I’d be interested in reviewing their product I had never heard of them. I had, however, read about the ways that the colors around us affect us, and so I was intrigued.

My camera isn’t great, so the images here don’t really do the color changes justice, but you get the idea.

The space, with regular lighting:

Yellow:

Red:

Blue (though, for some reason the camera makes it look much more green that it seemed in person):

Moodies come in every color you can think of and a few you probably wouldn’t. One of the covers we received didn’t change the light much at all. I thought, “well that one is kind of lame,” but then I turned the light off and it was glowing quite brightly in the dark! It would be perfect as a nightlight. Others, like the red and blue, created a very dramatic change. With Halloween coming, I can think of lots of ways that making a simple change in lighting might be fun!

One place I’d like to give my new light covers a try is in my youth room at church. I have always hated the harsh fluorescent lighting in there. I think a lamp with a colored cover on the bulb would go a long way toward making the space warmer and more interesting.

Of course, my kids immediately wanted them in their bedrooms. Sweet Hippie Daughter liked the purple and Toddler-saurus Rex was partial to the green.

If you’d like to try Moodies, they are only about $3 each. I also have a few to share!

Leave a comment, below, or a “like” or comment on the Facebook post related to this post and I will enter your name in a drawing to win one.

What space do you think you might like to change the mood in with a fun colored light?

*Moodies ARE NOT designed to work over the old-style incandescent lightbulbs and are not safe used in combination with them!

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Why not follow LazyHippieMama on WordPress, by email or Facebook to get all the updates.

If we work on our goals together, they may be a little easier to achieve!

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According to the most recent census about 3% of American children are homeschooled. It’s a growing movement, to be certain, but still far from “the norm.” Many, if not most, people in this country live their whole lives without even ever meeting a homeschool family. Therefore their perceptions are based on those folks “on the fringe” who end up on the evening news or Dr. Phil talking about how they are proud that their 15 year old has never read any book other than the Bible and they don’t believe in girls learning math.

The reality is that homeschooling families are pretty much everyone else. There are good days and bad. There are success stories and failures. There are some people who are just fabulously cool and some who are truly odd.

Still, when you are approaching such a major part of life in a way that is different than the way 97% of those around you are doing it, there are bound to be some awkward moments.

10 Awkward Moments in Homeschooling

1. The moment when someone knocks on the door, unexpectedly, at 1pm and you realize no one can answer it because the entire family is still in their PJs and/or underwear.

We’ve been learning, I swear! In fact, we were so busy learning we forgot to put on pants.

2. The moment when your child is asked where they go to school and they just stand there, staring at the person like a deer caught in the headlights.

I’m never sure why they don’t just say, “I’m homeschooled.” This, of course, does little to dispel the “weird unsocialized homeschooler” myth.

3. The moment when you’re asked what grade your child is in and you can picture all of their books and lists – 3rd grade math, 9th grade reading, 5th grade science, and a coloring book from 2009 they just won’t give up on until every corner is fabulous – and you realize you have no idea what grade they’re actually in without consulting your records.

This is the parent version of #2.

Come to think of it, maybe that’s why the kids can’t answer that question. Maybe they’re thinking, “I go to school in the dining room, the car, my mom’s office at work, the park, the local grange building…”

4. The moment when someone asks your child, “How long did you do school this morning?”

SHHHH! I’m trying to be sneaky over here! We ARE doing school! We’re grocery shopping and she’s keeping track of how much we’re spending. This is math class. She HATES math and doesn’t realize she’s studying right now so please don’t judge me when she tells you, “we didn’t do any school today.”

5. The moment you overhear your child say to a public school student, “What do you mean you’ve never had a single lesson on the science of Star Wars? Isn’t that a required subject?”

We’re nerds and we’re proud.

6. The moment when someone at the grocery store sees you and your two children and says, “Oh, you homeschool? That’s nice. Are the rest of the children at home then?”

OK, first of all – making assumptions about the number of children any family has is always a fast train to Awkwardland. Just don’t go there. If you are close enough to me to ask about my choices regarding child-bearing you already know how many kids I have and why. If you don’t already know, you really have no business inquiring about anything having to do with my uterus and/or sexual choices.

Second, contrary to what some people think, there are actually families that homeschool who have only one child. And some that have 3. And some that have 7. If you ask around at public school you’ll find a similar situation.

7. The moment when a public school child says, “This week we studied the feudal system.” And your child responds with, “We just watched movies this week.

They weren’t movies. They were DOCUMENTARIES. Totally different thing.

8. The moment when a friend who is a public school teacher says, “What textbook are you using?” And your child responds with, “We don’t use textbooks. We just look stuff up on the internet.”

We do a lot of learning online. I often direct my child to very reputable sites – everyone from NASA to PBS offers amazing free resources. We’re not just doing random Google searches, I swear. Er… well… not when it comes to the really important stuff anyway. But does my child say, “I’m learning science from NASA right now,”? Of course not. She just implies that her main source of information is YouTube.

9. The moment when you are trying to assure your family that, as homeschoolers, your children are still getting plenty of opportunity to develop great social skills and you child enters the room walking backwards with a bag over their head loudly singing Elvis’ Greatest Hits.

What can I say? They come from a long line of strange people and big Elvis fans. They get plenty of interaction with other children and adults as well but, really, the poor kids never stood a chance.

10. The moment you look out the window and see a group of kids all wrapped up in their winter gear, waiting in the dark to get on the bus and go to school for the day, while you are lying on the sofa under a pile of giggling kids and fuzzy, tail-wagging dogs as the 3rd episode in a row of The Magic School Bus begins.

Oh, wait. Wrong list. That one goes on 1,001 reasons why I love being one of the 3%.

Share your awkward story in the comments. Life’s too short for us not to laugh together!

But before you go, don’t miss out on this great give-a-way!

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to share a truly amazing book with you.

Tom Rogers’, “Eleven” is a wonderful story about a little boy who turns 11 on 9/11/2001. The book is totally age-appropriate for an older elementary student and engaging enough for any adult.

As the anniversary of that world-changing event approaches, I am having my 5th grader read “Eleven” in the hopes that she will come to understand that people just like her had their lives directly, irrevocably changed in a moment. If you’d like to read the review, you can do so by clicking here or you can visit www.ElevenTheBook.com.

I’m so excited that Tom Rogers has agreed to give a copy of his book to one lucky reader! It’s a read you don’t want to miss.

I am so excited to bring you this give-a-way from the ladies of The October Daily blog challenge. We all had such a fun time sharing our thoughts (almost) every day last month that we wanted to do one more thing to wrap up… and we wanted it to be something to celebrate you – the ones who read all those posts!

Not just one, but three big winners will be drawn, so be sure to get your entries in today!

And don’t forget… the Splash Math give-a-way is still live, too. You can follow this link to enter. Any child would benefit from Splash Math’s fun reinforcement of their math lessons.

A very special thank you to Mary at Secret Obsession Blog for hosting the October Daily and for putting this give-a-way together. If you haven’t visited her site yet, be sure to check it out. You won’t be sorry!